Medical Diseases

Diagnosed with follicular non-Hodgkins lymphoma, wife and mom of four littles Lisa Engelman experienced normal feelings of shock, fear, grief, and uncertainty. But she didn’t follow normal protocols when it came to seeking treatment.

A coming-of-age memoir for modern times, Bleeder is the incredibly compelling tale of author Shelby Smoak. A hemophiliac, Smoak discovered he had been infected with HIV during a blood transfusion at the start of his college career. This devastating and destabilizing news led Smoak to see his world from an entirely new perspective, one in which life-threatening illness was perpetually just around the corner. Set in the 1990s along the North Carolina coast, Bleeder traces Smoak’s quest for love in a world that feels increasingly dangerous.

Life Blood, written by a renowned leukaemia physician, tells unforgettable stories of his leukaemia patients’ battles to be cured but also uniquely describes the stresses that doctors face when looking after extremely ill young people during an extraordinary time in their lives. In reflecting on his long and illustrious career, Professor Marks’ memoir offers frank descriptions of his own medical family, some personal experiences of ill-health and his relationships with colleagues and patients in the NHS. Partly written during the Covid pandemic and as he approached retirement, Life Blood offers highly informed and compassionate views on modern medicine, from a pivotal point in both the author’s own professional life and the history of healthcare.

A story about a doctor helping people suffering from mysterious conditions overcome hopeless situations Dr. Zachary Tannous has a history of working with high-level athletes of all kinds, specializing in enhancing physical performance, treating sports traumas, with a focus in neurology, autoimmune disease, and conditions of severe chronic pain. As an ex-collegiate football and semi-professional rugby player, Dr. Tannous knows about traumatic injury and physical performance from a first-hand perspective.

When you or someone you love is diagnosed with cancer it feels like your whole world is falling apart. Not knowing what will happen next is terrifying, and that is the main reason I wrote this book, hoping that my experience could help others. The first title of this book was, “My body is weak but my mind is strong”, starting out as a story about my personal battle with cancer, and that was the mantra I used to hype myself up before my final chemotherapy session.

Leaving a life marked by crippling setbacks and his father's doubt, in 1967 a 20-something doctor from India arrived in America with only five dollars and the desire to claim his American dream. Faced with an entirely new culture, racism, and the lasting effects of disabling childhood injuries, through hard work and perseverance he overcame all odds. Now having performed over 15,000 open-heart surgeries, more than nearly every surgeon in history, Dr. Singh reflects on his most memorable patients and his incredible personal life.

A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter’s moving narrative of a group of patient advocates who are revolutionizing the way medical research is conducted. For more than half a century, medical advances have been driven by investigators launching experiments inside labs. Science is often conducted...

The field of biotechnology has evolved over the past four decades, developing medicines which are curing diseases. But this journey of success has been tough and arduous, built upon the shoulders of major failures. Good Genes Gone Bad highlights seven such colossal failures in drug...

These heartwarming and inspiring stories by brave women and men who have survived breast cancer are a must-listen for anyone personally or indirectly afflicted by the disease. How We Beat Breast Cancer brings together the experiences, thoughts, struggles, and victories of unique women and men from all walks of life, who tell the stories of their battles with breast cancer. Their narratives portray both the good and the bad in a real, candid language, sharing everything from diagnosis, through treatment, to life with and after cancer.

Off Our Chests recounts the story of Liza and John’s experience with her diagnosis and treatment. Written in alternating voices, Liza details her treatment and the complex decisions she had to make throughout her course of chemotherapy and radiation, including clinical trial participation and an elective double mastectomy, with the added complexity of being treated at the cancer center of which John was the chief of hematology and oncology and dealing with the emotional impact of knowing she may die as a young woman with young children.

The Long Tale of Tears and Smiles explores an immigrant oncologist’s journey of triumphs and struggles, from growing up in Syria, to the tragic death of her brother, to her experiences as a young immigrant medical student and trainee in the USA. Walk through her anguish witnessing the civil war in Syria and its devastation; see her become a practitioner, watching the field of oncology evolves throughout the years.

Being diagnosed with cancer is frightening; learning that the cancer is late stage takes that fear to unknown depths. After a year of brutal treatment, Mo Haque heard the dreaded words, 'There is nothing else we can do for you.' His cancer was terminal and left him questioning the price we put on life. Three years on from the 'small chance' of survival the experts had given him, Mo shares his incredible story: of despair and suffering, of hope and healing, of vulnerability and authenticity. This audiobook is for anyone going through the most challenging of times.

Immerse yourself in the history of medicine - a colourful story of skill, serendipity, trial and error, moments of genius, and dogged determination. From traditional Chinese medicine to today's sophisticated gene therapies and robotic surgery, A Short History of Medicine combines riveting...

Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 "parrot fever" pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms.

In Making Tough Decisions About End-of-Life Care in Dementia, Dr. Anne Kenny, a skilled palliative care physician, describes how to navigate the difficult journey of late-stage dementia with sensitivity, compassion, and common sense. Combining her personal experience caring for a mother with dementia with her medical expertise in both dementia and end-of-life care, Dr. Kenny helps the listener prepare for a family member's death while managing their own emotional health.

An inside account of the fight to contain the world's deadliest diseases -- and the panic and corruption that make them worse. Throughout history, humankind's biggest killers have been infectious diseases: the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, and AIDS alone account for over one hundred million...

Too many Americans die each year as a result of preventable medical error—mistakes, complications, and misdiagnoses. And many more of us are not receiving the best care possible, even though it’s readily available and we’re entitled to it. The key is knowing how to access it. The...

The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in 19th-century Britain. It argues that it was in the 19th century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

Following the trail of an unexpected family connection, acclaimed journalist Pam Fessler has unearthed the lost world of the patients, nurses, doctors, and researchers at Carville who struggled for over a century to eradicate Hansen's disease, the modern name for leprosy. Amid widespread public anxiety about foreign contamination and contagion, patients were deprived of basic rights - denied the right to vote, restricted from leaving Carville, and often forbidden from contact with their own parents or children.

When Jane, a world-famous Harvard oncologist, suddenly collapses at work, the medical team resuscitating her makes a shocking discovery: she has advanced breast cancer that she’s been hiding for years. The results are catastrophic. In Sickness shows how even the most rational people can be nearly destroyed by their irrational fears. Tragic, moving, and wryly funny at times, this is an unflinching portrayal of a complicated marriage and its secrets.